Neuromarketing: the Future of Advertising ?

Neuromarketing is a new method which uses functional MRI (fMRI) to better understand purchase decisions and optimize marketing campaigns.

Neuromarketing... what a strange name I had never heard before coming upon a documentary broadcasted a few days ago on TV. I recognized a MR scanner, performing functional MRI (fMRI) experiment. Researchers were showing the subjects different marketing stimuli and looked at corresponding brain activations. To sum up, neuromarketing is a new approach which uses functional MRI to find neuroanatomical correlates of marketing and purchase decision. Strange but... why not?

The main contribution to the field is a paper published by McClure et al in the prestigious journal Neuron (McClure et al. Neuron 2004). The purpose of the experiment was to understand the cognitive processes behind the choice between Coca-Cola and Pepsi. More than sixty volunteers underwent both behavioral testing and event-related fMRI sessions. In one group, the tasting sessions were totally blind: 2 doses of soda were presented anonymously and the subject had to tell which one tasted the best. In the second group, one of the two doses was explicitly designated as Coca-Cola, the second one was anonymous but was actually also Coca-Cola. The situation of the third group was identical to group 2 but with Pepsi in place of Coca-Cola. The results are surprising: while Pepsi's and Coca-Cola's success was similar in blind tests, a strong bias toward Coca-Cola was found in brand-cued tests. Ventromedial prefrontal cortex activation was correlated with soda preference in blind tests. This area is known to be implicated in signaling basic appetitive aspects of reward. In brand-cued tests, the strong bias towards Coca-Cola was associated with activations in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and hippocampus.

Some people are scared neuromarketing could be used to manipulate the consumer's brain. I can understand some concerns about the ethical aspects of the technique. However:

1) Interactions between neuropsychologists and marketing scientists are not new. Neuromarketing just uses new tools to answer the same questions. Evaluating the effect of a marketing campaign by looking at the sales is also a way to assess how well the campaign has marked people's brain.

2) MRI is not a machine to read the subjects thoughts! When talking about neuromarketing, it's important to understand well what functional MRI(fMRI) can or cannot show. Basically, fMRI uses the BOLD (Blood-Oxygen-Level Dependent) effect to localize the brain areas activated by a stimulus.

3) "Buy" button does not exist in the brain. Purchase decision, like any other act or emotion, is complex and involves many brain areas, which are poorly understood.

4) MRI cannot manipulate someone's brain. It's an imaging method not a stimulation technique.

5) MRI equipment is very expensive and research fundings are scarce. If mutually beneficial agreements can be found between research groups (whose aim is to further medicine) and marketing firms (whose aim is to increase their client's sales), why not ?

6) Neuromarketing is also an academic discipline (Lee et al. Int. J. PsychoPhysiol. 2007). Like neuroeconomics (Glimcher et al. Science 2004), neuromarketing can contribute to economic science.

Link: Functional MRI (fMRI)